, 1887-04-21
JOAQUIN MILLER
BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE CITY
OF SAN FRANCISCO.
lie Has a Few Words to Say About the
Musical Evolution of Ca!ifornia-Greek
Art and Education-The Beauty of the
Right sort Of NewEess,
Special Correspondence

vantaEes and advances nrtablo out here.
mention n.uSicaI features first. for music in
cluI,S, or ought 10 include, all culture. In
fat, YOU may remember that the Greeks
knew bUt two branches of education, or
rather they had but two grand divisions and
branches Of culture, and the greater of these
wa music Can | say that this city of San
Francisco ont here on the outer edge of the
world Is the musical center of the United
States. Wen, | mean something of that sort
Whether it i, our Italian skies and Climate, or
whether it Is the fact that a finer and higher
order of sunshine was drawn out here in the
brave old days, when cOnviCts did not start to
come here and the weak died on the
way, l do not know; but from what
ever cause, or combination of causes,
music holds a high place here. We have
famous teachers here, most promising pupils;
and their standard OF attainment is high.
Their aspirations are rs linitless rs their pos
SiLiiitiPS. | find | must pass on and out of
California now without taking my readers
through the University of California and the
University of the Pacific, as l promised to
do when we visited the famous Mills sem
inary: even the great university which SeHa-
tor Stanford has endowed with that amazing
Silt bi S''Jp,bpp iiltlSI dc i)iSSctl III Siitlcc
FOR the present. But i'll my feeble way
want to emphasize the fact before the country
that this is the home of music. America has
long set her face for Milan. When ] lived In
Milan. fifteen years ago, we had nearly 400
Americans there studying music, We
made Italy u new Italy to some extent
by generously sowing American money
all over that land III the pursuit of
art. / say San Francisco is better
than Milan. OF course, l do not say
that every one who comes to San Francisco
will learn to sing Indeed, | doubt if six
persons of all the 400 which l found in Milan
will ever he heard from over "the roofs of
the world;' but what l mean to say is that
those 400, or any number of them, would
have done better here than iii Milan. know
all this may read strangely to You. Yet, if
some one twenty years ago had prophe
sled that the poets and writer's We're to come
from this coast, 1t would have sounded more
strangely still
Patti finds this-at least so the wondrous
little woman says-the most musical city in
all the land. Her loudeSt triumphs are right
here. And Vet we are not of the Latin. but
of the German school; OF rather, might say,
a modification Of the two. But our greatest
teachers are German and of German educa-
ton.
There is as yet 10 great conservatory of
music here as i'll Paris Bug that is only a
question of time. Something of the sort will
he included i'll the great Stanford university.
Meantime iC must be remembered that France
had eminent musicians long before she had
ii conservatory. The same lining might easily
happen here And you must please pardon ali
these desultory allusions TO France, Italy
/ So i l.. g., 7
the country the fact that the Modoc Indian
is not employed i'll scalping people in the
streets of San Francisco! | take the response
bility of saying now, as | turn my face from
San Francisco and set out on my travels
toward Alnska, that this is surely, outside of
Boston and New Orleans, the most cultured
and civilized city i'll the United States; if not
i'll the whole wide world.
The methods here, as said before, are
rather German than Italian. For example,
when you play the piano. under San Fran
cisco teacher, You play not from the elbows
out but rather with the whole body. In fact,
you become part of the melody and move
ment, not only from your elbows out but
from the toes to the finger tips. And not
only that, but you become a part of the mel
ody and the movement in every feature of
the face; you look it, breathe it, live it!
And now if you will pause a moment and
recall the painfully tired face of the very
sweet, but very stiff, young lady who last
played the piano for you, it will help me
greatly i'll my effort to show in few words
the difference between the old methods, as
practiced i'll the eastern states, and the new
methods, as taught out here, by this new and
modified German school.
Oddly enough, the one whom l would place
at the head of this German school is an Amer
lean woman. But, of course, she was reared
and schColed in Germany. She is a cousin of
Senator Cheney, of New Hampshire, and the
wife OF John Vance Cheney, the poet of The
Century Magazine. l do not know how lcirg
she has been here or how she came to stanl al
the heal in a city, and in a trade, that boasts
of many eminent musicians l only know
that she is here at the head, and that the
wealthy mothers of this musical city count
themselves fortunate if they can have their
daughters among her limited number of Eu-
pills
And now good by to San Francisco, with
its strange strata of strange peoples. Geolog-
icaliy speaking, here is pleocrine period, the
post-pleocrine period, the primary, the sec
ondaIy, the tertiary and SO OIL; the China
man, the lrlsnnan, the Jew; jImble and
tumble of all ClineS and times! And vet
over and above and out of it all grows and
blooms and blossoms the sweetest music and
the loftiest sentiment of all this hemisphere
1t Is a town OF terrible contrasts; much in
little. Here are the lowest newspapers and
the higheSt-the first kind decidedly in the
majority. They fatten on politicians; many
of them are blacknailers, many desperate
and lawless; and they continue to do the city
great harm. But, as said before, above and
over and out of it all music and poetry and
patriotism stand forth like stars in n dark
night: and these will guide the great land to
great destiny.
IN coDc:I ion, as l leave the capital of the
Pacific, where l have fingered SO many
months, let me remind the older states again
that the schools and the school facilities are
unsurpassed, if equaled, in the world. And
when You reflect that we have 365 days Of
summer i'll the year, you can well understand
that the young bOtanist, geologist or what
not las to lose but little time on account of
the weather.
Divest yourself of the notion that there is
anything crudely new about our musical
sUpeTstructure or our educational edifce of
any sort. California is new i'll those things
only as a newer and larger and nobler e,li-
flee is new. And that is about the only sort
of newncss that can he laid to the door of the
great land out here, where the sun goes down
in the Balboa seas. JOAQUIN MILLER.